The Universal Destination of Socialism

A Venezuelan state agency on Friday ordered the temporary takeover of a factory that produces toilet paper in what it called an effort to ensure consistent supplies after embarrassing shortages earlier this year.

Embarrassing–that’s putting it mildly!

A national agency called Sundecop, which enforces price controls, said in a statement it would occupy one of the factories belonging to paper producer Manpa for 15 days, adding that National Guard troops would “safeguard” the facility.

“The action in the producer of toilet paper, sanitary napkins and disposable diapers responds to the state’s obligation to ensure a steady supply of basic goods for the people,” Sundecop said, adding it had observed “the violation of the right” to access such products.

It isn’t easy to pack that much stupidity into two brief paragraphs. If you have price controls, you will have shortages. To expect anything else is like expecting objects to fall upward, in defiance of the law of gravity. So if a government really wants to “ensure a steady supply of basic goods for the people,” it should get out of the way and allow producers to produce, and consumers to consume.

Government supporters laud efforts by Maduro, the successor to late socialist leader Hugo Chavez, for maintaining tough regulations of private businesses.

Obviously that’s working really well. Unless you would like some toilet paper.

They blame unscrupulous merchants for hoarding products to make quick profits, and celebrate the socialist government’s legacy of social assistance programs.

Are they living in the 14th century, or what? Shortages are due, not to insane government policies, but to “unscrupulous merchants” who “hoard products to make quick profits.” As long as they are going medieval, maybe they should burn some of those unscrupulous merchants at the stake.

What is it about socialism that allows it to rear its head, generation after generation, long after it has proved to be the dumbest idea in the history of human civilization? I can’t explain it. Maybe we should ask Barack Obama.